February 22, 2018

It’s always nice to be quoted in The Wall Street Journal, especially when the author is the perennially sharp-eyed editor Leslie Scism. Yesterday, she posted an interesting article on a recent lawsuit against MetLife that involves a problem with the payment streams from one of its structured settlement annuities.

Leslie has covered structured settlements for The Journal for years and it was a pleasure to provide her with background on the structured settlement industry, which issued about $5.6 billion in annuities in 2017.

Here’s Leslie’s article and she was kind enough to quote me midway down:

When Nicole Herivaux was born at Coney Island Hospital in New York in 1980, doctors made a mistake that left one of her arms useless.

Ms. Herivaux’s family sued and reached a settlement on the infant’s behalf. It provided $2,200-a-month in lifetime income paid out by an insurance firm, and lump sums of as much as $200,000 were sprinkled in to help, say, with college costs.